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UK’s 100 Most Powerful Black People
THE UK’s 100 most powerful people of African and Caribbean heritage are unveiled this week in the second annual edition of The Powerlist: Britain’s 100 Most Influential Black People. The list, compiled by a high-powered panel chaired by the British High Commissioner to Australia, Baroness Amos, smashes stereotypes by featuring business leaders, entrepreneurs and people from the arts, media, science and engineering – most of whom the average Briton will probably never have heard of, yet all are leaders in their field. Only one footballer appears on the list, Chris Powell, chair of the Professional Footballers’ Association, and no one from the world of entertainment gets a look-in. (Continue Reading…)

Facebook Yanks Poll Asking Whether to Kill Obama
The US Secret Service is trying to identify the people who launched an online poll at Facebook asking whether US President Barack Obama should be assassinated. Facebook on Monday shut down the user-generated poll, which was titled “Should Obama be killed?” and offered answer choices of yes, no, maybe, and “If he cuts my health care.” “Once we found out about it, we worked with Facebook to have it removed,” Secret Service spokesman Malcolm Wiley told AFP. “We are certainly investigating; just like we would with any threat case.” More than 750 Facebook users had reportedly cast votes by the time the poll was yanked from the wildly popular online social networking community. “This is sick and sad,” a Facebook user with the screen name Cocoa Fly said in a posting as the poll fueled passionate online exchanges at the website. “All of this anti-Obama rage is pure racism.” (Continue Reading…)

Michelle Obama Vows to Strike Olympic Gold for Chicago
First lady Michelle Obama vowed Monday to “take no prisoners” as she and her husband launch an unprecedented bid for Chicago’s 2016 Olympic bid. “It’s a battle — we’re going to win — take no prisoners,” the first lady said with a smile at a roundtable discussion with reporters in the White House State Dining Room. She compared the intense lobbying effort to the 2008 presidential campaign, noting that in the election campaign, a lot of voters made their decision in the final days. She said members of the International Olympic Committee may do the same. “And our view is, we’re not taking a chance,” she said. “We’re just not going to assume that the bids — that the decisions are made, and so that no matter what the outcome is, we’ll feel as a country, as a team, that we’ve done everything that we can to bring it home.” (Continue Reading…)

Among the pressures provoking these distresses were a father’s financial inadequacy and a growing awareness that, by finding employment himself, he could ameliorate the family’s exiguous circumstances. — Terence Brown, The Life of W. B. Yeats: A Critical Biography